How to choose the members of parliament in Germany

Bundestag - unicameral parliament, the Federal Republic of Germany, which is the highest legislative body of the state.Parliament is formed on the basis of his election as German citizens, through free general elections for a term of 4 years.

Guide

1

German constitution does not establish detailed rules on the electoral system.At the moment, the procedure of elections to the Bundestag are regulated by the Federal Law on Elections of 1993.The right to vote is granted to citizens of parliament in Germany, residing in the territory of at least three months and under the age of 18 years.

2

This is called active suffrage.Passive as suffrage, ie the right to be elected to Parliament, given to the citizens who have reached the age of 18, held in the German citizenship of at least one year, and not without the active suffrage.Election turnout threshold in Germany is missing.

3

German Parliament is composed of deputies elected by secret, general, free elections for a term of 4 years.Deputi

es have immunity, parliamentary indemnity and their powers can not be terminated by revocation of voters.

4

Election Act sets the total number of MPs to 631 people.The elections themselves are a mixed electoral system: half of the deputies shall be elected by constituencies, the other half - on party lists (the so-called land party list).

5

In the election, each voter has two votes.One vote cast for a candidate in an electoral district, the second vote is given - for the plot of the list of candidates of a particular party.In the constituency wins the candidate who receives the most votes.Germany is divided into 299 single-member constituencies, so filled with half of the seats of the Bundestag.The second half of the parliament is filled with candidates Land list of the party.In Germany, there are 16 federal states, so each land is a multi-member constituencies.

6

To determine the number of mandates received by party lists, a system of counting Hare-Niemeyer: all the "second votes" cast for the party list of a certain party are added and multiplied by the total number of allocated seats.Then, the resulting number is divided by the total number of "second votes" cast for all party lists.Thus, the calculated share of seats each party in the parliament.The distribution of mandates involving only those parties that across the state gathered at least 5 percent of the vote.